Melissa Aldana With The Scottsdale Community College Jazz Orchestra at The Nash

GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana has garnered international recognition for her visionary work as a band leader, as well as her deeply meditative interpretation of language and vocabulary. She was recently signed with Blue Note Records and will be releasing her debut album with the historic label titled 12 Stars in March 2022. “Melissa Aldana is one of the foremost musician/composers of her generation,” says Blue Note President Don Was. Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile and grew up in a musical family. Both her father and grandfather were saxophonists and she took up the instrument at age six under her father Marcos’ tutelage...

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GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana has garnered international recognition for her visionary work as a band leader, as well as her deeply meditative interpretation of language and vocabulary. She was recently signed with Blue Note Records and will be releasing her debut album with the historic label titled 12 Stars in March 2022. “Melissa Aldana is one of the foremost musician/composers of her generation,” says Blue Note President Don Was. Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile and grew up in a musical family. Both her father and grandfather were saxophonists and she took up the instrument at age six under her father Marcos’ tutelage. Aldana began on alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley, but switched to tenor upon first hearing the music of Sonny Rollins. She performed in Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo Pérez to play at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005. Aldana moved to the U.S. to attend the Berklee College of Music, and the year after graduating she released her first album Free Fall on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label in 2010, followed by Second Cycle in 2012. In 2013, at 24, she became the first female instrumentalist and the first South American musician to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, in which her father had been a semi-finalist in 1991. After her win, she released her third album Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio (Concord). Aldana is also an in-demand clinician and educator, and the New England Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Department recently appointed her to their jazz faculty beginning in the Fall of 2021.

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